ORLEANS — Ten Cape towns and Nantucket are banding together to find out more about the great white sharks cruising their shorelines.

Officials hope the state will approve a $262,500 grant to expand a tagging program and create signs and brochures to warn and educate beachgoers.

The proposal is part of a regional initiative to address public safety in the face of burgeoning seal and shark populations and an attack on a Denver man by a great white shark last summer.

"We don't know a lot about how they behave, where they go. Are they responding to weather systems, barometric pressure, who knows?" Orleans Harbormaster Dawson Farber said. He moderated the first regional shark meeting in October and will be in charge of town beaches this summer following the retirement of longtime Parks and Beaches Superintendent Paul Fulcher.

Orleans, which has the busiest beach south of the Cape Cod National Seashore's Marconi Beach in Wellfleet, is the lead town in applying for what is called a Community Innovation Challenge Grant. These grants are overseen by the state Executive Office of Administration and Finance and are intended to improve regional services through innovative projects. Last year was the first round of grants and $4 million was awarded to 27 programs out of a total 100 applicants.

Although there has been evidence of increasing shark activity over the past decade, the problem came to the forefront with the tagging of five great white sharks off Chatham in 2009 by state Division of Marine Fisheries shark scientist Greg Skomal. Last summer, Skomal, working with Sandwich fisherman Bill Chaprales, tagged 17 great whites. There is little indication, scientists say, that the seals, and the sharks that feed on them, have hit their peak populations. Skomal said he believes it likely more sharks are coming to the Cape every year.

Over the past few years, Skomal has moored 21 receivers in relatively shallow coastal waters off Chatham, Orleans, Wellfleet, Martha's Vineyard, Nantucket and Cuttyhunk. The devices are capable of receiving the individualized signals emitted by the acoustic tags fastened to 23 great white sharks over the past three years. Researchers must travel by boat to the receivers to download recorded information on which shark was detected and the date and time.

Researchers hope that by linking these signal detections with information on the surrounding area, they will find patterns and clues to white shark behavior. For instance, 88 percent of 974 recorded signals from 2011 occurred near a remote sandy spit south of Chatham where big groups of seals congregate. Researchers also noted that the seals were using a deep channel that ran close to the shoreline as a highway to beaches to the north. Skomal said he believed sharks may have homed in on the channel.

"Sharks want to be covert. The deeper you are, the less likely you'll be seen. Ten, 12, 15 feet of water close to where seals are could be a hot spot for them to attack," he said.

There's $100,000 in the grant proposal to add 30 receivers, buy 20 more tags and pay for the additional boat time to retrieve the data from the additional receivers.

"The idea was to supplement what Skomal is already doing," Farber said.

Skomal expects the receivers would be deployed around the Cape and Islands in areas where there currently is no coverage, such as Nantucket Sound and Cape Cod Bay. He also wants to fill in gaps between Orleans and Provincetown.

If the grant money is approved, Skomal will ask town officials where they would like to see the receivers deployed, such as near popular beaches or harbors. Towns have already committed to providing scientists with transportation offshore to download data from the receivers.

That's something they may not have to do for long. Next summer, Skomal hopes to test a system that will transmit the data to shore when a signal is received. That could also help provide some advance warning to beach managers that great whites could be in the area.

The bulk of the grant proposal, $162,000, is targeted for warning and education, paying for 500 signs to advise beach­goers of the possible presence of sharks, as well as larger educational signs and 750,000 brochures.

That may seem decidedly low-tech, but it is a proven approach the applicants hope will not only save lives but lessen the impact on the Cape economy.

"Fear regarding sharks due to a lack of public education may have a significant impact on the local economy," the towns said in their grant application.

Farber thought the grants could be awarded as soon as January.

"There is no silver bullet here," Skomal said. "Look at South Africa, Western Australia, and even California, and there's no easy solution. A lot has been tried. So far the most effective thing has been to study these animals and educate the public about them."